


After the Comet

by MaplePaizley, thewhiskerydragon



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Sad sad sad sad, Suicidal Thoughts, it cut deep, that scene in comet, where amber cries when anatole leaves for petersburg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27095842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaplePaizley/pseuds/MaplePaizley, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewhiskerydragon/pseuds/thewhiskerydragon
Summary: The comet wasn't a new beginning for everybody.
Relationships: Fyodor "Fedya" Ivanovich Dolokhov & Elena "Hélène" Vasilyevna Kuragina
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	After the Comet

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya pals! Back on our bullshit once more!!! 
> 
> This one-shot is an edited bit from one of many AUs we wrote and didn't intend to publish (up in the twenties by now LOL) but it felt too good to keep to ourselves. 
> 
> Please be aware that this fic references some suicidal thoughts/ alcohol abuse. 
> 
> Please stay safe and well! We're working on another Mary instalment, so keep your eyes peeled!

After thirty long years, thought Fedya Dolokhov as he made his way down Komenka Boulevard, you would’ve thought a man would be used to the Russian winter.

The cold had burrowed its way into every corner of Moscow. It howled incessantly through streets and alleys, slivered down the front of his coat and stiffened his limbs. Scant weeks ago, it hadn’t felt like this. There’d been a flicker of warmth left, like the last dying breaths of sunlight before the winter snuffed it out.

But everyone in this city had been left a little colder since that godforsaken night.

Now that the dust was slowly settling, it felt wrong to dwell on the whole affair. On Anatole. There were more important things to mourn—the war had already taken many brighter and better young men than him. He hadn’t been anything special, just another idiotic aristocrat with more money than sense who had occasionally had the capacity to be amusing until he wasn’t.

Fedya couldn’t quite say he missed him. Not exactly. That would have required sentiment of some kind. But it was strange and uncomfortable, for the first time in a while, to be without him. Rent was hard to come by without a spoilt prince to indulge you beyond reason.

The wind gave another vicious howl, and the back of Fedya’s head was lashed with snow and ice. Further down the street, the door of The English Club swung open, and out spilled a gaggle of people puffing cigars and laughing and singing. As he drew closer, turning his collar up against the wind, he spotted an unexpected familiar figure in the crowd.

Despite the ten degrees of frost, Hélène was dressed in her pearls and a silk dress that left her arms and shoulders bare. She was drunk too, tottering in those stupid shoes she always wore and clinging to the arm of a young man with a shock of blonde hair who was all but carrying her. Fedya could hear her voice from halfway down the street. Every now and then one or the other would stumble, and Hélène would laugh and press a sloppy kiss to his neck, or the boy would grin and draw her closer.

Fedya was only half-surprised. He knew better than anyone else the sort of company Hélène kept, the sort of entertainment she sought, and the sort of woman she was. After everything that had transpired, he couldn’t blame her for wanting her distractions. But normally she had the sense to keep these matters to herself, behind closed doors and away from prying eyes.

“Countess Bezukhova,” Fedya said as he approached the pair.

Hélène looked up at the sound of her name, stiffening when she saw him. She hadn’t spoken with him since the night before the elopement. He’d avoided her ever since, like a coward. He knew she would find some way to blame him for the whole disaster for whatever part he’d played in it, as if she hadn’t given her brother a purse full of Pierre’s money herself.

“Captain Dolokhov,” she said flatly. “I thought you had a war to go fight in.”

Fedya pushed his hands into his pockets and let himself rock back and forth on the balls of his feet. “You know how fond I’ve become of the city. Thought I’d enjoy it while it lasts.”

Hélène ran a hand down her companion’s cheek. Fedya recognized him, a little belatedly, as Boris Drubetskoy. “Borya,” she said, “I don’t believe you’ve met the Captain yet.”

They had, Fedya remembered, even as Boris seemed to want to forget about their encounter. Prince Drubetskoy had served under him at Austerlitz, then again in his tent at the encampment after the battle. A bit of a disappointing performance, verging on unmemorable. He was the sort of man who would’ve gotten down on his knees and licked your boots clean if it meant having a good word put in for him. It was almost pitiful of Hélène to stoop so low. Or perhaps she just preferred that sort—pathetic, obedient, and poor.

Boris drew his arm around Hélène a little tighter, possessively cupping her waist. His eyes were gloating. “Of course I know the assassin. We’re old friends, aren’t we, Captain?”

Hélène erupted into nonsensical laughter and threw her head back. Boris smiled and bent his head to kiss her throat, keeping eye contact with Fedya.

Fedya could have scoffed. The ignorant little fool, with that grin on his face like he thought he knew something Fedya didn’t. He probably thought he was clever, that he’d seduced her, that he was anything more to her than a plaything to be cast aside the moment she grew bored.

Hélène grinned spitefully and touched Boris’s chin. “Haven’t you heard? He lost a duel to my husband. Over me, of course.”

Boris guffawed. “Bezukhov? Are you quite alright, Dolokhov?”

Fedya put on a cold false smile, the sort he wore at the poker table, or behind the sights of his pistol. “Healthy as a horse. And how is your Julie getting along?” he asked coolly. “I should congratulate you on your engagement. Your mother must be terribly pleased.”

He would’ve much rather gone for his pistol. The underhanded threat was laughably unlike him, but desperate times and all that nonsense. But it got the desired effect. Boris’s face went slack, then very red. He detached himself from Hélène at once. Fedya bit down a laugh. Perhaps this approach wasn’t entirely without its merits.

“She is,” Boris said, the tips of his ears burning like a scolded schoolboy. “Terribly.”

Hélène frowned. “Borya,” she said, grabbing his arm.

“You’ll tell her my mother passes on her best wishes, won’t you?” said Fedya.

Boris nodded. He glanced at Hélène, looking distinctly flustered. “I…I really shouldn’t have detained you so, Countess,” he said. He drew his arm back. “Forgive me. I wish you well. Good evening.”

He hastily turned on his heel and fled down the street without so much as a second glance at Hélène. Fedya watched him go, vaguely amused.

“And they say chivalry is dead,” he said drily.

Hélène turned an ugly poisonous look at him. “You’re a beast,” she hissed, her voice hoarse. “Gutter trash.”

“You won’t do your reputation any favours, parading your lovers around.”

Hélène did something he would never in his life have expected of her. She spit on the ground at his feet. Then she started off again. Fedya caught her by the upper arm, incensed and insulted.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he snarled.

“Back to the Club.”

Fedya took her in, properly this time. With the dark circles under her eyes and the pallor of her face, she looked as if she hadn’t slept properly in a week. She probably hadn’t.

“You’re piss drunk,” he said.

“And you’ve lost me my entertainment for the night.”

“Drubetskoy? Scraping the bottom of the barrel, are we?”

“Go to hell.”

That was enough. Fedya gave a sharp tug and pulled her closer, determined to shepherd her in a carriage and wash his hands of her.

Hélène’s expression darkened. She let herself fall against his chest, more for show it seemed than anything. Before he knew what was happening, she leaned up and forced her mouth against his.

Fedya froze up initially, too surprised to say or do anything. It felt just as it had the last time they’d kissed this way, God only knew how long ago, just as hot and aggressive and selfish. It made him wonder how he’d ever enjoyed it.

Hélène curled her hand in the hairs along the back of his neck. She pressed herself flush against his front. He felt her tongue pushing insistently against his lips. If it had been any other woman, he would’ve bitten her for it. Instead he jerked back.

“No,” he said stiffly. “You know we don’t work that way anymore.”

Hélène pouted. They’d had their dalliances in the past, long over now. Fedya knew he was a handsome man, and Hélène was an undeniably beautiful woman. It had been all too easy to convince himself to go along with it. More than once they’d fucked on the dining room table while Pierre sat in his study twiddling his thumbs. One particularly daring night in an abandoned hallway in Anna Pavlovna’s Petersburg home.

And then Anatole had arrived, and everything changed.

It was Hélène who had pushed him away in the end. She had known, somehow before he fully realized, that he had pursued the wrong Kuragin. She always knew. So why this now?

“Please, Fedya,” she whined, and curled her other hand in the lapel of his jacket. “I need _something_. Don’t you care for me at all?”

“You need a glass of water and a good night’s sleep. Look at yourself, Lena. You look like you’ve been dragged through Siberia and then back again.”

“No,” she said cupping his cheek. “I know you _want_ me, Fyedka. We were always so good together, weren’t we?”

Fedya sighed and pressed his eyes shut. It was bad enough arguing with her sober. This, now, seemed damnably pointless.

He held her by the small of her back, afraid that she would fall if he moved. Hélène took the opportunity to press her face into his neck, clumsily nipping at his throat. She kept doggedly tugging at his shirt, her hand sliding further down, until she reached his waistband, as if they weren’t standing in one of Moscow’s busiest streets in the middle of a vicious Russian winter. She grinned, victorious, and slipped her fingers into his trousers.

Fedya shoved her away on instinct, but Hélène still had her hand in his shirt. They both went teetering off balance for a breathless moment before they fell, her beneath him, with just about as little dignity as subtlety, to the curb.

Hélène shrieked indignantly. Several people in the street turned to stare. Fedya’s face burned hotly in humiliation. He pushed himself to his feet. Hélène glowered at him indignantly, her chest heaving.

“I’ll leave you alone, then!” she shouted. “Would that make you happy?”

Fedya looked down at her, struggling to stay propped up on her elbows, with her dress wet with melting snow and her bottom lip split and bleeding, and felt an unwelcome rush of pity. God only knew how many times he had seen both of the Kuragins drunk off their asses. This certainly wasn’t the first. But there was something strange in Hélène now that he didn’t care for at all. Something that he felt uncomfortably responsible for.

Twitching all over with the precursors of guilt, Fedya scrounged about in his pockets for a few kopeks and bought a cup of strong-smelling Turkish coffee from a street trader. He made Hélène sit up straight and pushed it into her hands, forcing her fingers around it until he trusted her not to let it tip into the gutter. 

“Drink,” he said. “It’ll help you sober up.”

Hélène gave a haughty little sniff—proud even this far gone, Jesus Christ—and threw the drink back like a shot, spilling coffee down her front. She considered the cup carefully. “This tastes like piss,” she said. 

Fedya almost laughed at that. That was more like the Hélène he knew. Polished as a pearl and as crass as any river bawd.

“One wonders how a countess knows what piss tastes like,” he said drily.

Hélène shot him a withering look. “You’re being very tiresome tonight.”

“You push me to these ends drinking yourself half to death.”

“It’s the only way you can get by in these trying times,” she said, almost laughing. “Drink and dance. That’s all I have left now.”

He knew better than to rise to her bait, but by God was it tempting sometimes. Pity or not, if she were a man, he thought, he would’ve met her mouth with his fist by now.

“Christ above,” Fedya snapped. “Did you forget about the mansion and the dacha and the pearls?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Hélène fired back. “I don’t have Tolya. Nothing matters anymore.”

Fedya frowned. The last time he had seen Anatole, it had been from the back of Balaga’s troika as it sped down Prechistensky Boulevard, en route to Fedya’s flat. The prince had staggered out to the street as if in a daze, with his waistcoat unbuttoned and his carpetbag slung over his shoulder and only one arm in his coat, and his face had been so white and drawn and bewildered he may just as well have seen a ghost. When Marya Dmitrievna had appeared in the doorway screaming threats and insults—then not even ten minutes ago, though it had felt like a lifetime—Anatole had torn down the steps of the porch like a man with his trouser leg caught on a rocket, but as he made his way to Hélène’s front door, it seemed to Fedya that his feet were on the verge of sinking into the snow. He had looked frail, small even. Too shocked to be upset. 

And Fedya hadn’t heard a word from him since.

“What do you mean?” he said. The words scraped past his tongue as dry as sandpaper. He should’ve been gentle, he told himself. Should’ve offered her the comfort she was seeking. But some small selfish part of him whispered that she didn’t deserve it.

Hélène looked down at her hands and watched as they curled into fists, as though they weren’t her own. A drop of blood fell from her lip into the snow, wetting it with red. “I knew it was a bad idea. I _told_ him to wait until she was married.”

A thousand awful possibilities flashed through Fedya’s mind. Anatole had run away, or lost a duel over Natasha Rostova’s honour, or been arrested and shipped off to Siberia.

“Did something happen, Lena? Something with Anatole?”

“It’s all ruined,” she cried, and let her face fall into her hands. “He’s _gone_.” 

Fedya wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her, if it would’ve gotten a straight answer out of her.

“It’s your own fault,” she went on. “I know you were only jealous of her. Thought you could ruin him to have him all to yourself, did you? All you’ve ever wanted is to _own_ him.”

“Careful, Hélène,” he said warningly.

Hélène raised her chin. There was something unexpectedly hateful in her eyes. Cruel. Deliberate. “You know what Pierre did?” she said in a cold sneer. “When he found out what happened? He held him down and threatened to smash his head in. All for the sake of that stupid girl.”

Fedya felt the wind knocked out of him. His stomach went cold and heavy, like something made of lead. “He’s…but he’s alright?”

“I don’t _know_!” she snarled. “I don't know _anything_! I’ve no idea where he is, or whether he’s alright and it’s all because of _you_!”

Hélène stopped to catch her breath. She let her chin hang. Her eyes were wet and her face was flushed. But she didn’t cry. She never did. She had trained herself out of it, cut away whatever human part of her showed what exactly she felt on the inside.

“Pierre turned him out,” she said finally. She raised a hand to her lip, still bleeding. “He said he’d kill him if he showed his face in Moscow again.” She turned her face up and exhaled sharply. “That’s the end of it.”

Fedya sighed. Banishment wasn’t the worst punishment that could’ve come of this. But she didn’t need to hear that now, and wouldn’t listen to him if he said. He lowered himself to sit beside her, wincing as the slush sank through his trousers. They’d both have pneumonia come morning if they weren’t careful about it. As things stood, Hélène’s lips were already blue where the lipstick had been smeared off.

“C’mere,” he said softly.

He shrugged off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. Hélène burrowed into it, drawing the lapels close around her throat. Fedya shivered. It was bitterly cold, but she needed it more.

“You should go home, Lena,” he said. “You’ll freeze to death like this.”

Hélène gave a long, ragged sigh. “I don’t want to see Pierre,” she said, in a quiet voice.

“So you’ll avoid him. It’s a big enough house. You’ll find a nice little room to hide yourself away in and it’ll all be fine.”

“Oh, Fedya,” she sighed, and her voice trailed off, as if she had meant to finish with, _if only it were that easy_ , but simply couldn’t muster up the energy to do so. There was no need. Fedya, for the first time since they had met, understood her perfectly.

He’d preferred not understanding.

Fedya clasped his hands between his knees. “You’ll do well enough for yourself, won’t you?” he said. “It’s what you’ve always done.”

Hélène was silent for a long while. “I don’t care anymore,” she said finally, resolutely. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have anything left to lose.”

“Drinking yourself to death won’t help.”

Hélène tipped her head back and laughed. It was a broken laugh, tear-filled and bitter. “Can’t exactly hurt me now, can it?”

Fedya stood and took her hand, then pulled her upright onto her unsteady feet. She stumbled a little, leaning against his chest with a soft _oh_. But there were no more demands or protests or insults.

Hélène’s face withered, and she pressed her forehead to his sternum. Fedya let his arms close around her and rested his chin on the top of her head. Her arms felt so cold. 

He hailed a passing carriage and helped her into it. They didn’t talk the whole ride, and Fedya didn’t bother to make conversation. The carriage-driver brought them to Pierre’s house, a redbrick manor on Prechistensky Boulevard with a blue door. Fedya manhandled Hélène, half-asleep and listing against his shoulder, out of the carriage and up to the porch.

Pierre had answered the door. Dressed in his tea-stained housecoat, with his glasses smudged with fingerprints and biscuit crumbs in his beard, he looked as if he’d just rolled out of bed. Fedya’s mood soured immediately at the sight of him.

“Evening, Bezukhov,” he said coolly, not deigning to bother with _Count_.

Pierre blinked and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Dolokhov? I…it’s nearly two in the morning. What’s the matter?”

Fedya nodded to Hélène, still wrapped in his jacket. He wondered dimly what Pierre would think to see the two of them in this state, with Hélène’s lipstick smeared down her chin, her lip still bleeding, and his own clothes distinctly rumpled from her pawing.

Pierre frowned and reached for her. “H-Hélène? Are you—is everything quite alright?”

Hélène recoiled away from his touch and buried her face in Fedya’s shoulder instead. Pierre’s eyes darted between the two of them, but he looked more defeated than angry. No more room in him for jealousy, then.

“I’m sorry about this,” he muttered. “She hasn’t been herself of late.”

“I wonder why,” Fedya said drily.

Pierre lowered his gaze, suitably abashed.

“She’ll have a bitch of a headache in the morning,” Fedya said, disentangling himself from Hélène. “Make sure she drinks some water and goes to bed.”

Hélène made an injured sound of protest and grappled for Fedya’s arm.

“I’ll look after her,” Pierre said gruffly.

“Go inside,” Fedya said to Hélène. “You should rest.”

Hélène shook her head and refused to look up. It was a small comfort that Pierre at least looked somewhat embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said. He hesitated for a breath. “Perhaps you ought to come in.”

Fedya pried her fingers off of his arm. “She’s your wife,” he said, keeping his voice level and his face devoid of emotion, “not mine. You’ve made it abundantly clear.”

Pierre flushed and began to stammer out a non-response. 

Hélène straightened herself against the doorframe and fixed a cold look on Fedya. The maids came to collect her, one on each side, and steadied her between them. Pierre watched her helplessly as they shepherded her down the hallway. Any man would’ve asked how his wife had been found in such a state. But Pierre was too much of a coward.

“Well,” Pierre said awkwardly, dawdling a little, “thank you for bringing her home in one piece.”

“It wasn’t as if you would’ve done it.”

“I didn’t even know she was out,” he said quietly. “She didn’t tell me. We’ve hardly spoken the past few days.”

How simply he said it. How easy it was for him. As if nothing at all had happened. As if Pierre hadn’t taken Anatole by the shirt collar and threatened to bludgeon him to death.

“Christ, Bezukhov, can you blame her?”

Pierre went quiet for a moment. His face became sorrowful, remorseful. “I hope you know,” he said shakily, “how deeply I regret everything.”

Fedya shook his head in disgust and started back down the steps. He felt the line of scar along his shoulder burn again, that smouldering bit of lead buried forever in his muscle and flesh. He’d tried to carve it out one night, against the doctor’s strict orders, with half a bottle of vodka in him to blunt his nerves.

He thought again of that embarrassed look on Pierre’s face. That apology. It wasn’t enough. It never would be. He was owed _something_.

Fedya stopped at the street. He turned back to Pierre.

“She won’t last long without him. You know that,” he said.

Pierre quailed. It was hard to hate him this way, so quiet and cowardly. Fedya almost wished he had insulted him and closed the door in his face, if only to have the satisfaction of demanding a fight.

But there was no damn point to any of this. Fedya turned his collar up as he walked headlong into the wind, his face deliberately blank. He didn’t have it in him to care any longer. One bullet taken for the Kuragins was one too many. He tried and gave and it was somehow never enough. Hélène was already a lost cause. Anatole was gone. He could find a way to live without them.

Even if they couldn’t live without him.


End file.
